"Our ancestors dreamed us up and then bent reality to create us...They had no reason to believe this was likely, but together they dreamed of freedom, and they brought us into being. We are responsible for interpreting their regrets and realizing their imaginings."
-Walidah Imarisha
Born in Detroit
Born in Detroit, MI and raised as a military child my life journey has taken me across the South and back home to Detroit— the city that shaped me. After returning to Detroit from Jacksonville, Florida, in 2013 I dedicated myself to building community power and advancing liberation through grassroots organizing. For over a decade I worked in local and national movements addressing environmental racism, racial and gender justice, gentrification, and prison and police abolition. These experiences gave me the confirmation that remembering our stories is critical to our liberation.
“Everything I do is guided by a commitment to community, care, and justice.”
As a proud graduate of Marygrove College, where I earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Sociology, I developed an understanding of the connections between power, policy, and community change. In 2015 I became a founding member of the Detroit chapter of Black Youth Project 100, where we organized for Black liberation through a Black queer feminist lens. I also became a founding member of the Detroit Radical Childcare Collective, where we worked to build systems of care that support organizers, families, and communities in sustaining movement work. My journey in learning to preserve and amplify the stories of marginalized communities continued during my work at the Arab American National Museum, where I conducted my first oral history project and experienced the transformative power of memory, storytelling, and archives.
Collectively, these experiences inspired me to pursue graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where I earned a Master of Arts in Women’s and Gender Studies and a Master of Science in Information Studies. In my thesis, I developed a Black queer feminist archival praxis, a framework that centers Black agency, honors Black cultural memory traditions, and positions preservation work as a tool for collective liberation.
Everything I do is guided by a commitment to community, care, and justice. Rather organizing, researching, preserving history, or building new possibilities, I believe our greatest strength lies in our ability to come together, tell our stories, care for one another, and envision a world where we not only survive but thrive.
CV.
A mission-driven and creative fourth-generation Detroiter, archivist, Black queer feminist, cultural organizer, and memory worker aims to utilize her talents to nurture the archivist within each of us. With over ten years of experience in local and national organizing, she excels in community outreach, project management, and community research. She has a proven history of developing values led community scholarship, teaching archival practices, and utilizing innovative methods to communicate culturally rooted narratives for the purpose of building beloved community.
Full CV available upon request.
-
Master of Science in Information Studies University of Texas at Austin (2020)
Master of Arts in Women and Gender Studies University of Texas at Austin (2020)
Thesis: “Storing Our Memories in the Water: Black Women’s Organizing and the Detroit Water Crisis” Advisor: Dr. Nicole Burrowes
Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Sociology Marygove College, Detroit (May 2015)
Associate of Arts in Social Work Florida State College at Jacksonville (May 2013)
-
Black Bottom Archives (BBA) | Detroit, MI
Archival Consultant → Digital Archivist → Executive Director → Co-Director, Archives & Education | 2019–PresentFrom digital archive consultant to Executive Director, I’ve led BBA across every stage of its growth -- building and maintaining its digital archive, developing public education programs and workshops, fundraising over a 1 million dollars during my director tenor, and collaborating with K-12, university, and grassroots educators to embed Black Detroit history into classrooms and communities.
Instruction and Outreach Archivist | Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University | Detroit, MI
December 2024–PresentI facilitate sessions and create learning tools that introduce university, K-12, and community groups to archives, Reuther research resources, and provide primary source instruction. Additionally I serve as the archive’s liaison to educators and the broader Detroit community, building partnerships that amplify labor and urban history collections.
Political Education and Programs Coordinator | The Rising Majority
October 2020–January 2023Designed and facilitated bi-weekly political education programs for a national network of organizations, producing resource guides and curricula to support cross-movement learning. Led the development of Rising Majority’s "Vision for 2050," a strategic document used to align organizations across the country.
Archival Consultant | Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)
July 2020–March 2021Developed an internal archive documenting M4BL's 2020 Freedom Summer program across eight cities. Facilitated intergenerational dialogues between 1964 SNCC Freedom Summer participants and 2020 organizers, centering historical continuity as a tool for movement building.
-
Keynote. "Sankofa Community Research" Design Futures Forum | Detroit, MI | June 2026
Panelist. "Engaging"
Community-Based Shared Stewardship Symposium | UM -Bentley Historical Library | May 2026Panelist. "Echoes of the Archive: Unearthing Hidden Narratives"
Charles H. Wright Museum | Detroit, MI | September 2025Presenter. "Black Bottom Archives: Practicing Sankofa"
Wayne RESA Teaching Diverse Histories Summit | Detroit, MI | August 2025Keynote. "Detroit's Black Bottom"
American Association of Geographers Conference | Detroit, MI | March 2025Panelist. "History & Healing: Reparations and Repair in Detroit & Beyond"
University of Michigan Ann Arbor | January 2024Presenter. "Mapping our Memory in the Waters"
African American Digital Humanities Conference, University of Maryland | October 2018
